Black and White
by Jacqueline King
Summary: Roxas awakes for the first time in Twilight Town. Sora awakes for the first time after having his memories replaced. And Axel continues to walk through his waking nightmare. And all they feel is black and white...


**A/N:** Titles/subtitles from the song Black and White by Sarah McLachlan.

**_

* * *

And all I feel is black and white..._**

* * *

Roxas opened his eyes to the perpetual shadows of twilight.

For once it didn't seem right to wake up in his bed. It felt all wrong, so similar to the feeling of having fallen asleep in the late afternoon and waking up after the sun had finally settled down below the horizon. Time was disorienting, and returning to the land of the living was an up-hill battle.

It didn't seem right to look out on the streets of Twilight Town from his bedroom window. He expected to see—he didn't know what. He closed his eyes, attempting to get the pounding headache out of his head.

Behind his eyelids he saw briefly a world of black and white. He was the black. Someone else… some one painfully familiar that he'd never met before was the white.

There was no grey.

He opened his eyes with a gasp, threading his hands through his mess of blond hair and pulling painfully hard at the roots. Each time he blinked a new image bled through his eyelids, each scarcely memorable, but powerful.

A figure of a person sitting on the ground, staring up at him through black. A disembodied voice screaming the word: _why? _

A room full of dark shapes sitting atop white columns. A cold calculating voice murmuring the word: _hearts. _

But the black and white was suddenly stained red as he glanced at the sun before closing his eyes for the next image of what he could only conclude was a very bad dream.

The red was stained atop a black shadow that held him. It was suffocating, to the point where he thought he was drowning. As if he'd reached the point of drowning where he couldn't bring himself to struggle any longer, and was sinking deeper and deeper, enjoying the feeling of nothing.

But the nothingness wasn't gentle resignation. It was painful and all consuming.

He didn't want to feel _nothing. _

Roxas opened his eyes and refused to let himself blink for a full two minutes.

He knew if he did he would cry.

* * *

**_And I'm wound up small and tight... _**

* * *

Sora opened his eyes in a room full of eye-wrenching light.

He had no clue as to how he'd gotten there, other than the fact he remembered a face so similar to his own looking up… at himself. No, that didn't explain anything.

He felt himself fall forward, too confused to catch himself as he hit the floor of a room filled with nothing but white and the strange contraption that had just held him.

Eyes wide open; he felt memories tug themselves back into place in his head. A strange, sliding feeling as they aligned themselves. But there were a few that didn't seem to fit. He placed a gloved hand over his temple, fingers curling into dark brown hair as his eyes clouded over.

He saw a world of black and white in his mind's eye. The white room around him so bland, that the images of his mind seemed to project themselves on the walls. He saw black shapes move against the wall, holding weapons he'd never seen, except for one. One held two blades so familiar to him he jolted.

The black shapes slid down off the walls like running ink.

He shook his head, and the motion caused his head to real back into a memory he never recalled having.

A man consumed in the depths of a black cloak let his hood fall, fire erupting from it as it fell. The fire stained the walls with its vermillion. He reached out a dark hand, the gesture so familiar that Sora gasped, the image suddenly blurring with a silver haired boy about to be consumed by darkness.

And both images—one so familiar and difficult to see, the other completely new pulled at his heart.

He didn't want to feel the emptiness those two people caused him.

Sora closed his eyes and refused to let himself open them for a full two minutes.

He knew if he did he would cry.

* * *

**_And I don't know who I am._**

* * *

Axel opened his eyes from what he assumed was the equivalent of sleep.

He saw nothing. He felt nothing. He'd closed his eyes in a portal, after saying goodbye to his only hope. Hope for what—he didn't know anymore. At the time it had seem rather obvious.

He had been sick of living in a world of black and white. He was an inkblot. His actions, mannerisms, and his conception of feeling mirror images of the person he once was, but was never truly _him_. He knew the truth; he could not escape his existence. Not unless he ended it all together.

And he couldn't do that. Because he remembered the ghost of an emotion known as hope—and it told him to keep searching for the Nobody who was by now a Somebody.

He closed his eyes and saw nothing. He opened his eyes and saw nothing.

He slipped through the world of darkness as he opened another portal, flaming red hair staining its shadows with blood. Before he slipped out into the bright whiteness of a castle that should not exist, he fingered the teardrop tattoos under his eyes.

He touched them briefly, for only a moment but the feeling lingered beneath them as someone else's hand.

He knew if he could, he would have cried.


End file.
